Prague - "We decided to have one part about the existence of God. And there is no other actor that could play God better than Karel Gott," said a member of a script writing team that is working on a new Czech TV sitcom called Comeback.
The legendary crooner who has been a fixture in the Czech as well as wider European pop star heaven since the 1960s, sings in fluent German and has recently opened a restaurant in Prague decorated with his own oil paintings celebrates a comeback to a silver screen.
This Thursday´s Comeback series will see Karel Gott as a deus ex machina who comes to save the two main protagonists of the sitcom - heavy metal fan Ozzák and pop music fan Tomáš.
Not the first time
However, this is not the first acting stint for Karel Gott. Beside the sitcom Comeback, Božský Karel (Divine Karel), as he is popularly known among Czechs, has recently taken a role in a romantic comedy Veni, vidi, vici set in a golf playground.
The 69-year old singer, who tied the knot for the first time in his life only last January in Las Vegas, made his film debut in 1964 when he starred in Comedy Around a Door Handle directed by Václav Krška. In the same year Gott appeared in a crazy musical Thousand Clarinets by Vladimír Svitáček and Jan Roháč who was a pioneering director in the Czech New Wave in the 1960s.
This pacifist musical comedy where weapons turn into musical instruments is seen by many as a prefigure of the Prague Spring and possibly peaceful Velvet Revolution in 1989.
Read more: Legendary Czech crooner weds in Las Vegas
Credible roles
In most of the films the perennial "Golden Nightingale" (the name of the Czech/-oslovak pop music award he has won more than two dozen times) plays himself.
Film critics say Czech viewers would not buy any other role Gott would try to take. When playing himself people tend to forgive him his stiff performance that Karel Gott, known for a strong sense of self-irony, is very much aware of too.
Gott gained his fame (and the title of the National Artist) during the period of communism in the former Czechoslovakia, although he also had a considerable following in the West Germany, Austria and numerous other countries where he was free to travel and perform unlike most of his compatriots.
No other Czech pop star has a biography in as many language versions of Wikipedia as Karel Gott does.
